*Rabochaya Gazeta* is troubled by the political meaning of the offensive. One of its contributors reproaches another even for the fact that his evasive phrases ultimately amount to an admission that the Russian revolutionary army is objectively shedding blood now not in the name of peace without annexations, but in the name of the annexationist plans of the Allied bourgeoisie (*Rabochaya Gazeta* No. 93, p. 2, feuilleton, column No. 1).

It is precisely this "objective" meaning of the offensive that cannot but trouble the masses of workers, who still follow the Mensheviks in part. And this is reflected in the pages of *Rabochaya Gazeta*. Unwilling to openly break with the workers, the newspaper tries to somehow connect the "offensive" with the revolutionary proletarian struggle for peace. The trouble for the ingenious editorial board, however, lies in the fact that no connection—except a negative one—can be established here.

And it is difficult to imagine a more pitiful and more confused spectacle than that of this respectable editorial board, frightened by the very spirits it itself conjured up together with the Socialist Revolutionaries.

On the one hand, *Rabochaya Gazeta* reports that "now in the West the significance of the Russian offensive is being perceived in a completely false manner. English and French bourgeois newspapers see in it a renunciation of the 'utopian' plans of the Soviet. Chauvinist resolutions are being passed under the banner of greetings to Kerensky and the advancing revolutionary army. And to the thunder of war drums over the Russian offensive, persecutions are intensifying against the comrades of Russian democracy who recognize the same platform of peace as the latter."

A most valuable admission! Especially when it comes from the pages of a ministerial newspaper, which only yesterday considered our predictions of these inevitable consequences of the offensive to be the result of Bolshevik malice. It turns out that the matter is not one of our "malice," but rather that the policy adopted by the leaders of the Soviet has its own logic, and that this logic leads to the strengthening of anti-revolutionary forces both abroad and within Russia.

It is precisely this unpleasant fact that *Rabochaya Gazeta* would like somehow to gloss over. And the means proposed by the editorial board are very simple: "there is an urgent necessity for the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, together with the Soviet of Peasants' Deputies, to issue a definite and categorical declaration to the effect that the aims of the war remain for Russian democracy the same as before," and so on and so forth. You see how decisively the Mensheviks fight against imperialist war: they are ready to make yet another urgent, categorical declaration. How many of these very "urgent," most "categorical," most "passionate" declarations there have already been. And how many more times will these same categorical declarations have to be repeated in the most expedited manner in order to soften somewhat with words the deeds of that government which the ministerial *Rabochaya Gazeta* wholly supports.

No, gentlemen, with the most "categorical" words, declarations, and notes you will not weaken the facts of which you yourselves report. These facts can only be countered by deeds—deeds which would actually signify a break with the policy of continuing the imperialist war. The government of Lvov–Tereshchenko–Shingarev–Kerensky–Tsereteli cannot do this. It can only, through its cowardly and pitiful policy regarding Finland and Ukraine, confirm its complete incapacity to carry out even the most "categorical" declarations about "no annexations" and the "right" of self-determination. And under these conditions all these promised declarations will be a symbol that serves to stupefy the masses. The stupefaction of the masses with sonorous declarations, and not "proletarian struggle for peace"—this is the program of *Rabochaya Gazeta*, this is its actual answer to the growth of anti-revolutionary forces in connection with the offensive.

*Pravda* No. 95, July 13 (June 30), 1917

Printed according to the text of the newspaper *Pravda*